UX newsletter — December 2019

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Message from the Editor

This month's article is about writing good usability task scenarios. I hope you find it useful.

— David Travis

Usability task scenarios: The beating heart of a usability test

Usability tests are unique. We ask people to do real tasks with the system and watch. As the person completes the task, we watch their behaviour and listen to their stream-of-consciousness narrative. But what makes a good usability task scenario? Read the article in full: Usability task scenarios: The beating heart of a usability test.

From our archives: Storytelling in UX research

UX researchers are storytellers who have devised tools like personas and user journey maps to tell the story of their research. Focusing on the story, rather than the tool, is a powerful way to become more effective. Read the article in full: Storytelling in UX research.

Spend your end-of-year budget surplus with us!

If you're in the happy but slightly awkward position of having money you need to spend before the end of the year, then we can help! We can invoice you now for user experience consulting or training that you take in 2020. Spend your budget surplus on half-a-day's consultancy through to a customised training program for your team. Visit this link for more information: Is your company's end-of-year approaching?

What we’re reading

Some interesting UX-related articles that got my attention over the last month:

• iOS vs. Android App UI Design: The Complete Guide
• Useful reading for user researchers: The Illusion of Transparency Bias: "If you think you know how someone else feels, you should ask them to confirm. You shouldn’t assume you’ve got it right—you probably haven’t."
• The business value of design: "One medical-equipment group tied executive bonuses to the product’s usability metrics… The company’s market share jumped 40 percent as investors understand the upcoming user-centric products and services that set the company apart from its competition".
• The Definitive Guide to Asking Follow-up Questions: "Follow-up questions, well-positioned and well-crafted, transform an interview from a scripted set of questions to a genuine research instrument."
• Game designers: it's time to do something about your 8-hour installations.
• I don't pretend to understand the maths in this paper, but I do understand the "Big Data Paradox": the bigger the data, the surer we fool ourselves. [PDF]

Like these? Want more? View more posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The UX Tea Break

Some videos I published on YouTube last month:

• Focus Groups as a UX Research Method: Just Say No.
• Usability Test Moderation Checklist
• Avoiding bias in user research
• Usability testing in a different language

Like these? Want more? Subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Review of the year

Here's a list of the articles we published in 2019 that you may have missed.

• In January, Philip Hodgson wrote 12 symptoms of a back-to-front design process where he argued that product companies pay too much heed to their retail customers and, in so doing, they prevent the development team from getting first-hand knowledge of end users.
• February's article answered the question Is UX Certification worth it? The article summarises research with 292 people who had taken and passed the BCS Foundation Certificate in User Experience.
• In March, I critiqued preference testing in Repeat after me: Preference testing is not A/B Testing.
• In April, I wondered if we should start giving prizes to shame bad examples of design in 'And the award goes to…' How to avoid winning a Procrustes Award for bad UX.
• Consistency is at the heart of good product design. But consistency is often misinterpreted as making things look or behave the same way. So in May I examined The Principle of Least Surprise
• As the weather warmed up, Philip Hodgson wrote a two-part article on speech recognition. In June he asked, Why is speech recognition so difficult? Then in July, he followed up with, VUI as an error recovery system.
• In August, I compared the UX research methods we use today with the methods we were using 16 years ago in The future of UX research is automated, and that's a problem.
• In September, I looked at what I take with me on a field visit in The minimalist field researcher: What's in my bag?
• Doing UX research in a university is very different to doing UX research in a business setting. So in October, I described the differences in Transitioning from academic research to UX research.
• And last month, I wrote about Common traps in user needs research and how to avoid them.

I hope you stay with us for another 12 months of wittering!

Upcoming UX training courses

Foundation Certificate in User Experience, Jan 21-23 2020, London.

In this fun and hands-on training course, you'll practice all the key areas of UX — from interviewing your users through to prototyping and usability testing your designs — while you prepare for and take the BCS Foundation Certificate exam. View the full syllabus: Foundation Certificate in User Experience.

UX quotation of the month

"To find ideas, find problems. To find problems, talk to people." — Julie Zhou.

Did I mention I've published a book?

It's titled Think Like a UX Researcher. Grab your copy here.

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